“What happens if Nico finds what he wants?”
“He gives it to the Bellarios.”
“And then?”
“Then anyone connected to the file becomes disposable.”
She understood.
Her father had become disposable.
Maybe her mother too, though not in the same way. Her mother had not died after Gabriel Hart. Not physically. But something in her had gone quiet and never returned.
Livia had spent years believing grief destroyed her family.
Now she was learning men had.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“I’ll take you.”
“No.”
“Livia—”
“No. I came alone. I leave alone.”
Dante’s face closed.
He nodded once.
“Then take this.”
He held out a small black phone.
She stared at it.
“A burner?”
“Yes.”
“How dramatic.”
“How necessary.”
She did not take it.
Dante stepped closer but stopped before he could crowd her.
“If Nico comes to your apartment tonight, do not open the door. If you see a black Escalade with no plates near your studio, leave through the back. If anyone asks about your father, call me.”
“You sound like you’ve given this speech before.”
“Never to someone I cared about.”
The words hung between them.
Too heavy.
Too honest.
Too impossible.
Livia took the phone because refusing it suddenly felt childish.
Their fingers brushed.
It was almost nothing.
A brief touch.
A mistake.
But her entire body reacted.
So did his.
For one dangerous second, neither of them moved.
Then Livia pulled her hand back.
“I’m still Nico’s girlfriend,” she said, though the sentence tasted like ash.
Dante’s face went still.
“I know.”
“And you are…”
She searched for the word.
Criminal.
Enemy.
Liar.
Danger.
Dante saved her the trouble.
“I am the man you should stay away from.”
“Yes.”
“But you won’t.”
She should have been furious.
Instead, she was terrified because he sounded certain.
Livia turned and walked toward the side door before she did something unforgivable, like ask him to stop her.
Outside, rain fell harder.
She did not look back.
But halfway down the block, she felt it.
Dante watching until she disappeared.
That night, Livia did not sleep.
She went home, locked the door, pushed a chair under the handle like a woman in a bad thriller, and opened every box she owned.
Photo albums.
Tax records.
Birthday cards.
Her father’s old watch.
Her mother’s recipe notebook.
A tin full of subway tokens and movie tickets.
Nothing.
At 2:17 in the morning, she found the blue receipt.
It slipped from the back of a framed photograph of her father holding her at Coney Island when she was six. The receipt was faded, folded twice, and marked with her mother’s maiden name.
A storage unit.
Paid annually.
Eleven years in advance.
Livia sat on the floor surrounded by her dead father’s things.
Her hands went cold.
At 2:19, someone knocked on her apartment door.
Not loudly.
Not violently.
Three calm knocks.
Then Nico’s voice came through the wood.
“Livia? Baby? Open up.”
She did not move.
Her phone buzzed.
Nico again.
I know you’re home. I saw your light.
Her throat closed.
The black phone Dante had given her sat on the floor beside her knee.
She picked it up.
There was only one contact saved.
D.
Her fingers shook as she called.
Dante answered on the first ring.
“Livia.”
“He’s here,” she whispered.
Dante’s voice changed.
Not louder.
Worse.
Colder.
“Do not open the door.”
Nico knocked again.
“Livia, come on. I just want to talk.”
Dante said, “Go to your bedroom. Lock the door. Stay away from windows.”
“He sounds normal.”
“He is counting on that.”
Livia crawled toward the hallway, clutching the phone.
Nico sighed outside the door.
“I know you met him.”
Her body froze.
Dante heard the silence.
“What did he say?”
“He knows.”
The pause on Dante’s end lasted less than a second, but she felt the violence inside it.
“Bedroom. Now.”
Nico’s voice softened.
“Livia, Dante is dangerous. Whatever he told you, he twisted it. Open the door and let me explain.”
She backed into the bedroom and locked it.
“Nico says you’re dangerous.”
“I am.”
The honesty nearly made her laugh, but terror held it down.
“Then why do I feel safer talking to you?”
Dante did not answer.
Nico’s voice sharpened.
“Open the door.”
Then the apartment door rattled.
Once.
Twice.
The chair scraped.
Livia pressed a hand over her mouth.
Dante’s voice dropped.
“Livia, listen to me. Go to the fire escape.”
“I’m on the fourth floor.”
“Can you climb down?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can.”
The front door cracked.
Wood splintered.
Livia climbed out the bedroom window into the wet metal cold of the fire escape. Rain hit her face. The city below blurred in neon and darkness.
Behind her, the apartment door burst open.
Nico shouted her name.